Cristobal Castro at Yoshii - sculpture - New York, New York - Review Of Exhibitions

Art in America, Jan, 1994 by Robert G. Edelman

With this single piece of sculpture, titled Terre, Cristobal Castro has found a medium--dirt--that is ideally suited to his Minimalist sensibility. Castro has devised a system of "casting" soil (purchased from a local nursery) using wood slats held together by taut wires. Here a series of rectangular blocks of black earth formed a low, gently curved ramp that almost bisected the gallery. This truncated wedge, however, was not a severe, hard-edged object; Castro scraped the sides vertically, producing a rough, serrated surface. The moist dirt held its shape like carved plaster. As time passed, the soil dried out, separated into sections, and some dirt tumbled to the gallery floor, creating an appearance of decay or erosion that Castro apparently desires. Given enough time, the soil would have returned to its original state, loose on the floor, perhaps later to be recycled into another sculpture. Near the end of the show, small green shoots began to emerge from the deteriorating blocks, adding tiny accents of unexpected color.

The scale of the piece--at its apex, about thigh high--and its position on the floor made it resemble an architectural scale model or a fragment of an imagined larger structure. It suggested a warped, buried ski jump. Random associations like these notwithstanding, Castro is clearly in pursuit of a form that will not contradict his material but rather will emphasize its unique qualities. He has not reached the point where, as with the earthworks of Smithson or De Maria, the construct seems inevitable. This could be an advantage, especially if Castro continues to explore the material's potential without the need to make a dramatic formal statement. Terre, finally, is austere, elegant and unpretentious.

Castro, a native of Colombia, is known for his modest-size forged-iron sculptures. Trained as a blacksmitn, he bent and cut single pieces of metal into a variety of simple, evocative configurations. Soil, a less-permanent medium but one with considerable sculptural possibilities, affords him the opportunity to work on a grander scale and to investigate a different set of issues. With this quiet, contemplative work, Castro has begun that search.